


But all at once my heart took flight

by Bitterblue



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 17:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5673697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitterblue/pseuds/Bitterblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cait throws a NYE party, Blue and Piper get locked in a bathroom, there's charades and lock picking. You know. The usual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But all at once my heart took flight

**Author's Note:**

> This grew out of a prompt from halyes45 on tumblr for a NYE kiss between Blue and Piper.

The thud of the bass line can still be felt through the floor even as Nora ducks into the bathroom upstairs, but the higher parts are thankfully obscured and muffled. She sighs with relief, sitting on the closed toilet. When she promised Cait she'd come to the party at her place at New Year's Eve, Nora had, apparently naïvely, assumed it would be something smaller in scale than it proved to be. Instead of the quiet night of board games she'd pictured (because _obviously_ they'd grown out of the sort of riotous things Cait used to throw), the party is crowded, drunk, and loud. Cait, herself drunk and loud, has at least been having a good time. Nora's been having hives.

Just as she's pulling her phone out of her pocket, a rush of loud techno blasts into the room as the door opens, and then quickly cuts off as the door is slammed shut again. A dark-haired woman, glasses askew on her freckled nose, leans with her back against the door and sighs, eyes closed. Nora coughs, surprised. The woman's eyes open, and her face falls even as an embarrassed blush overtakes her cheeks and ears.

" _Oh_ my god. I'm sorry. The door—the _lock_ , it wasn't. I'll just—I'll go. I...I will go." She fumbles for the door handle, covering her face with her free hand.

"I wasn't—I was just...hiding. From the party." Nora isn't quite sure why she speaks up, even as the other woman's opening the door, but it makes the freckled woman pause and raise her eyebrows.

"Oh." She closes the door firmly again. "Me too."

They share an embarrassed smile, and then the woman leans back against the door, crossing her arms over her chest. "I don't think we met downstairs—I don't think I met most of downstairs. I'm Piper. Used to bartend with Cait. Not sure how I forgot how big her parties can get."

Nora laughs a little, running her hand through her hair. The undercut Cait had convinced her to get a few days back ("Come on! New year, new _you_!") is still fuzzy to touch. "Nora. I went to college with her." She decides to leave out the bit where she was in the ROTC program as a way to pay for school, and Cait had been in it more out of spite for her family than anything else after they sent her to a military boarding school ("To try to avert my _terrible_ habits."). If Piper knows Cait, she'll be able to guess any of it she doesn't already know.

"Huh. So what do you do now?" Piper sounds genuinely curious.

"I'm in law school." She laughs again, raising her eyebrows at the surprised look on Piper's face. "Cait says I'm her built-in lawyer, but I'm doing employment law, not the kind of criminal stuff she seems to think I'll save her from." She closes the lid of the toilet and sits on it. "You?"

Piper smiles broadly. "I'm a journalist." Her mouth twists a little, like she's tasted something sour. "Well. Blogger. Online journalist. _Writer_." A sore subject, apparently. She shrugs, reaching behind her for the door knob. "Well. It's been a pleasure to get a break from the festivities, but I guess I'll leave you to your hiding spot." The knob rattles as she tries to turn it. It doesn't move. Piper twists to look at it as she tries again, but the door remains firmly closed, the knob stubbornly refusing to turn. She looks at Nora with a nervous grin. "So. Uh. The door is...locked."

* * *

 

"I could have danced all night!"

"My Fair Lady."

"Yes. Um. Fuck." Nora hunches her shoulders up, snapping rhythmically and humming a wordless tune.

"...West Side Story?"

"Yes! How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman—"

"Alexander Hamilton!"

"Yes. Oh, fuck, I don't know this one. Skip. Um. Okay—" The timer beeps, cutting her off, and Piper lowers the phone from her forehead. "That was a good round. You knew more musical theatre than you claimed."

She flicks through the answers, still smiling a touch triumphantly."Wow, the ones you don't know I've never even heard of. What the hell is _Next to Normal_?" She looks up, and snickers a little, "Not _us_. Well. It helps that you can carry a tune." Piper hands the phone to Nora, who scrolls through the categories before settling on Geography.

Being trapped in the bathroom hasn't been half as bad as it could have been. Piper is fun company, with a dry sense of humour Nora likes, and a quiet night playing games is much more what she'd imagined tonight would be—even if it's been in a slightly cramped bathroom. If she's honest with herself, there's a lot about Piper to like. An uncharitable part of Nora wonders if this was all some elaborate set-up by Cait, but that would have required more planning and forethought than Nora really thinks she'd commit when there's a party available instead.

"No, geography—one of my weak points! We're going to fail miserably." Piper's sitting on the edge of the bathtub, smiling up at Nora even as she predicts their doom.

"We can stop?"

"Nah. If it makes you happy, Blue, I will fail at geography heads up charades for you."

Nora blushes, laughing. " _Blue_?" Piper reaches up, and tugs on the longer part of Nora's hair, naturally ginger and dyed, on the buzzed part, a bright sky blue. They both go still, Nora's laughter still hanging in the air, with Piper's fingers in her hair, close to cupping her cheek.

Her cheeks and ears positively burning, Nora leans out of Piper's reach. The other woman's hand hangs in the air a beat before dropping to her side.

A shout outside the door provides a welcome distraction from the suddenly uncomfortably small bathroom, a muffled, triumphant noise. They both look up, towards the door, but it doesn't open. The shout comes again, and Nora can make it out this time: "One minute to midnight!" She raises her eyebrows, turning to look at Piper.

"We've been here longer than I thought," she comments, but Piper's still looking at the door like she can will it open. Nora stands, stretching her legs. Maybe someone will want to use the bathroom after midnight, and finally let them out. Piper finally looks back at her, expression unreadable, and then she stands, too.

"So I'm thinking we should kiss." They're standing close, almost touching. Nora goes red again.

"Um. What?"

"At midnight. We should kiss." She sounds very certain, and nods for punctuation.

"We only just met tonight."

"Yeah, but, _Blue_. Who else am I going to kiss?"

Nora makes an indignant noise, frowning. "So you're saying that you _only_ want to kiss me because we're trapped in here together and not because—" She's cut off as her phone alarm goes off and Piper cups her face in warm hands, leaning in, and kissing her soundly. Nora squeaks in surprise, and then, when Piper keeps kissing her, patient and sweet, she sighs a little and leans into the shorter woman's frame.

"No," breathes Piper against her lips, pressing more kisses to the corners of her mouth and cheeks, "I want to kiss you because you seem very kissable and I've been thinking about it for, uh, hours." She laughs a little as Nora kisses her again.

"We've only been in here since ten."

"Yeah. _Hours_."

Nora pulls back, shaking her head with a flustered grin. She turns and opens the medicine cabinet, digging through it before producing a pair of bobby pins. Squatting to be eye level with the door, she straightens both pins and then slides one experimentally into the lock. It pops open with a satisfying _click_ with only the tiniest bit of pressure. Nora turns the knob experimentally, then looks up at Piper, whose expression is a mix of indignant and impressed.

"You could have picked that the _whole time_?" she demands.

"Um," Nora stands, and opens the door. When Cait had insisted on teaching her how to pick basic locks a few years back, she hadn't thought it would ever be actually useful. "In my defense, I didn't think it would be _that_ easy." She grins over her shoulder at Piper. "Besides, I was having fun." That, at least, is true: spending New Year's Eve with Piper has been better than anything she'd imagined.

Piper half-heartedly glares, but then slips her hand into Nora's. "You're lucky you're so cute." The walk into the hallway together, the sounds of the party still loud from downstairs.

"So...I don't know about you, but I'm _starving_. I think the burger place down the road is open all night?" She squeezes Piper's hand.

"So I'm thinking we should date." Piper grins again, and she looks so _pleased_ with herself Nora starts to laugh again. "And we can start with this burger place."


End file.
